Weather conditions are a critical part of situational-awareness for a flight crew of an aircraft. Certain weather hazards, such as decreased visibility, increased winds, turbulence, precipitation, increased icing potential, convective weather, and the like, may affect the performance of the aircraft as well as the comfort and safety of passengers. Traditionally, the flight crew receives a pre-flight briefing package prior to a flight that includes current and forecast weather information for departure, destination, and alternate airports, as well as airports along the route. This weather information may be in the form of paper printouts containing textual information as well as 2-D weather maps. Particularly during a long flight, however, this information may become outdated, decreasing the effectiveness of pre-flight weather information in maintaining weather situational-awareness en-route.
The flight crew may have access to updated weather information in-flight through radio communications with air-traffic control (“ATC”) or a text-based datalink, such as the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (“ACARS”). ACARS is a system for the transmission of short, relatively simple text messaging between aircraft and ground stations via radio or satellite. A pilot may utilize ACARS to request current and forecast weather information regarding a particular airport, as well as to be alerted to significant weather phenomena that affect the safety of all aircraft, such as turbulence, icing, volcanic ash, and the like.
The weather information received via ACARS or other communication, however, is predominately textual in nature. In many cases, the flight crew must mentally map this textual current and forecast weather information to navigational maps covering the aircraft's current route in order to determine any potential impact of the weather conditions. In addition, the flight crew may infer weather trends from the information received at various times during the flight in order to better forecast the conditions that may occur in subsequent portions of the flight. These mental operations may increase the workload of the flight crew, which may be especially critical in certain phases of flight, such as preparation for landing or an emergency diversion, as well as create opportunities for errors to occur.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure made herein is presented.